Ukraine Documentary Sheds Spotlight On Foster Children Growing Up Amid War

On October 10, the Danish documentary filmmaker Simon Lereng Wilmont was in Kyiv for the Ukrainian premiere of his latest film, A House Made of Splinters, which shed light on the effect of war on children.

The documentary, shot over a year in 2019-2020, is set in Lysychansk, a strategically important city in the Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. It has been affected by the conflict since 2014, but it also became a centre of military battles in the summer of 2022.

Ukraine Documentary

While military clashes are not part of the film, A House Made of Splinters portrays children from these torn families as they land in the Lysychansk Centre in Eastern Ukraine, a shelter where they are taken care of for up to nine months while awaiting court custody decisions. Their fate in midst of war forms the larger narrative of the story, with children facing neglect through the loss of family members in the conflict, or their parents' alcoholism and mental illness resulting from war-related PTSD.

The documentary follows different children as they make friends in the shelter all the while awaiting for their parents to visit or someone else to determine their fates. Through their games and exchanges with the other children in the centre, the children indirectly reveal how, despite their young age, they already know way too much about substance abuse and domestic violence. The women running the centre are also searching for long-term solutions for the children.

"Obviously there were social issues in this region already before the war started in 2014, but with the war being in their back garden, so to speak, for so many years, the resources slowly got drained," filmmaker Simon Lereng Wilmont tells DW. He added that joblessness and the lack of support from the state have led to a spiral of social issues, "And that's the more invisible but no less forceful consequences of having the war so close to your civil society."

A House Made of Splinters is gaining momentum at film festivals, having shown across various festivals throughout Europe. It has now won the Politiken:Dox Award at the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival and has been shortlisted for the upcoming European Film Awards' best documentary prize.

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